


Fair Game

by Cephei



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Torture, the description gets pretty visceral
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-01
Updated: 2013-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-23 06:42:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/619211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cephei/pseuds/Cephei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Odin is very old and very powerful and he loves his sons very much. Both of them.  Loki gets captured and then his dad finds out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fair Game

**Author's Note:**

> "It is not wise to give something old and powerful something to love. It tends to end badly and everyone has to live with the consequences."
> 
> -paraphrased from Fair Game by Patricia Briggs

The light moves over the shining surface of the newly built gate house like the ripples in the crystal water around it. There is a calmness in the movement that has no place in the heart of Odin. He is only rage. The Allfather has seen much. He has lost many. And when they cycle round he will see and lose more. But he refuses to lose this one more than he already has.

Heimdall stands silently beside him, sword raised in preparation.

-

His son’s ability to hide himself grates on The Allfather. It is not that he had watched at all times, it is that he could. When it was needed. They are his children after all, and they are still young. Sometimes it seems as though Thor is the younger of the two; Odin has no one but himself to blame for that. His heir’s banishment had not been long enough, but it had been a start and he had needed to return. Loki’s banishment, though self inflicted, had been ill timed. And much much too long.

The spells Loki cast to hide himself from the gate keeper’s eyes held until the moment his heart stopped beating. There had been a long, needle like blade through it, transmitting a plus of energy to the core of him where it would otherwise not reach. They pierced his heart with the instrument after they had set him aflame. Hela had sent to Odin in a fit of rage. He had almost been with her, she cried, she had been reaching for his hand.

The spell held, and then it had melted away and they could see everything.

It did not begin again when the scientists brought him back.

He had been taken by a Midgardian group (it does not matter which, there are many, and he does not care. All he cares about is that they Have. His. Child.) The first thing he sees are short gasping breaths, curses spat in droplets of blood, and lips stained red. Loki gags, spitting up, trails of red dribbling down his chin so that he would not drown in the blood from when they had cut out his tongue to see how long it would take to grow back (an average of four days).

He had, at one point, burst free of his restraints, and torn nine guards apart like they were children’s toys. Flaying them open, the white of their bones gleaming through the waves of red that rained down upon the floor, a morbid display of symmetry in the lines. When the next wave of soldiers came upon him, Loki had been sitting comfortably on the floor, painting delicate designs on the walls with blood. He broke the neck of one man, and all the fingers of another, before they had been able to take him down and return him to the lab, dragging him back down the corridor through the remains of their comrades.

As punishment for his attempt to escape they take out the paring knives. 

A man is leaning over to peel away the skin on his chest when Loki jerks what he can of his body up (his arms have several straps holding them down) and bites the cheek off of the scientist. The man shrieks, hands pawing uselessly at his face. He trips back and falls while the others in the room waver between their own safety and holding the prisoner down. Loki spits the flap of skin out to the side, slimy with blood. It falls like a wet leaf. The man is left on the floor, wailing and scrambling until he no longer moves. After the incident Loki’s neck is secured to the lab table so tightly that it is nearly crushed. He cackles.

They bring in a new scientist. When they are done with him there is no skin left.

-

Frigga waits as well, a sentinel at his side. Silent. (She will see this done, she told him. There would be no argument.) Her jaw is hardened, knuckles white in their grip on Sleipnir's tack. Their grandson’s nostrils flare once, his tail snapping out to the side, but they are otherwise both the pinnacle of propriety, their rage tucked inside for when it is needed.

Odin takes his grandson’s reins and mounts. The bifrost roars open.

The Allfather will raze them to the ground. Then he will bring back what is left of them for her. And she will shred them to ribbons.


End file.
